Cinnabon

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  • 19 Jan

    The Squeaky Shoe Gets Replaced

    Walking down the polished floor at work earlier this week, a strange noise filled the hallway.

    It was the faint sound of my footsteps — nothing more.  That may seem like an obvious observation, but given that I was wearing a pair of brown leather shoes, the near silence was a relief.

    I got a new pair shoes last weekend, and the quiet walk came during the first day I wore them.  The pair they replaced were similar — a different brand and 12 years older, but from a short distance you wouldn’t be able to tell the difference by looking.  But your ears would know.

    This older pair, which served me valiantly through the years, had one major flaw.  The soles would let off a high squeaking noise on any hard floor with the least bit of polish to it.  Imagine submerging your shoes in a puddle and walking inside without wiping your feet.  That’s what they sounded like at all times — wet or dry.

    So it’s nice to now be able to walk without thinking people are judging me to be a delinquent who can’t wipe his feet and without making everyone start to wonder how it could be raining when the weather’s nice.


    Out with the old, in with the new

    Buying the new shoes was a fun experience.  Since I’ve (still) spent more of my working life in the retail footwear industry than anything else, it’s odd to be on the other side of that experience.  Little things like being allowed to actually sit down on the benches feel wrong.  I even find myself tucking wayward laces into the display shoes and straightening them on the shelves as I walk by.

    I wonder if anyone else in retail, or with that background, catches themselves doing those things without thinking, or is compelled to inform the sales associate of their connection to the business.  Of course I found a perfectly normally place in our conversation to slip that in — because I’m smooth like that — and it actually set off a whole round of dorky shoe technology talk that I kind of miss from my selling days.

    What I miss more is working just down the hall from a Cinnabon and a Taco Bell.  Though for the sake of my health, maybe it’s a good thing I don’t work in that mall anymore.

    By cjhannas Cinnabon mall shoes Uncategorized
  • 17 Jun

    The Right to Cinnabon

    All malls in the United States of America should be legally required to have a Cinnabon.

    I mean, how can you properly shop if you don’t have the prospect of a warm, gooey, sugary delight waiting just around the corner? It shouldn’t be allowed.

    One of my roommates told me last night that the Cinnabon at Fair Oaks Mall had closed. The company’s website still lists the location, but for the sake of argument we’ll take his word for it.

    Granted, Fair Oaks is one of three malls I could drive to within 15 minutes. But one of the other malls has never to my knowledge had a Cinnabon, so the shopping-to-deliciousness ratio in this area is taking a huge hit.

    While driving home from the grocery store (where we bought ice cream after discovering Chik-Fil-A and its milshakes were closed), we came up with a list of mall must-haves.

    Under our proposed legislation, all malls must feature:

    -Cinnabon
    -Auntie Anne’s
    -Sbarro
    -Some sort of smoothie place (we’re not picky)
    -Sadly these days, Starbucks

    That’s the list. You can eat something substantial. You can get a quick sugary snack. You can wash it down with something fruity and cold. You can get a jolt of something with caffeine. That should be enough to get you through the mall experience.

    As a former mall employee (thank you, New Balance), I consider myself an expert in shopping-adjacent eateries. At Tysons Corner Center, the New Balance store is just down the hallway from Cinnabon. The second you step out into the mall, you can’t miss the aroma. It is intoxicating.

    They frequently offered a buy two, get one free deal, which I took advantage of on several glorious occasions. Before you question my sanity, I didn’t eat all three of them myself.

    Except, of course, if you count the one time that I did.

    I wanted to eat two of them and got the third one for another employee to enjoy. For some reason, nobody else in the store wanted to partake in the amazingness that is Cinnabon. My hand forced, I plowed through the first two and continued eating until the third one was polished off. Fortunately I weigh roughly 27 pounds and at the time had a job that required me to be moving around all day, so there were no ill effects. I do wonder what would have happened if I had washed that down with a Mountain Dew.

    One of the malls near where I lived in Florida had a Cinnabon, so I guess the greater Jacksonville area is safe. But I just checked the mall down the road from where I went to college in Pennsylvania, and they do not have the required number of cinnamon roll establishments.

    Time to step up your game, Selinsgrove.

    In totally unrelated news, for those of you who like celebrity gossip or “Dumb & Dumber” quotes, I’ll close with this. It looks like Rachel Bilson’s puzzling engagement to Hayden Christensen may be over. “So you’re saying there’s a chance…”

    By cjhannas Cinnabon food mall Uncategorized
  • 24 Nov

    Significant Research

    There are some things in this world that just make me happy for some reason.

    Today’s example is the ability of humans to not take themselves too seriously while indulging in serious questions of our world. There is a group that awards the “Ig Nobel” prizes that “honor achievements that first make people laugh, and then make them think.”

    Honored are people who studied things like if rats can distinguish between Dutch spoken backwards and Japanese spoken backwards.

    And then there’s the woman who researched the word “the” and how it affects people when they are trying to alphabetize things. Where do you put “The pill,” “The Beatles,” or “The Hague” in an index? Important research.

    The best part of the Ig Nobels is that they have an awards ceremony where the “honorees” pay their own way to take part in the tongue-in-cheek look at their “groundbreaking” work.

    They’re all in on the joke and don’t care. They stand behind their research, give a light-hearted speech that explains it, and just have a good time.

    I listened to this year’s ceremony on an NPR podcast, but the organization has the full video on their website if you want an extremely enjoyable time.

    My favorite portion is where researchers describe their fields in what is called 24/7. They give a technical jargon-filled description in 24 seconds, followed by one anybody can understand in just 7 words. Just brilliant.

    My Ig-inspired research would definitely be the behavior of mall shoppers towards kiosks and their salespeople. The interactions are fascinating to watch.

    I recommend getting a job at the mall so you can watch and make it seem like you have a reason to be there, not just some creepy dude who sits on the same bench day after day and never buys anything but a Cinnabon.

    During my mall career, I had the pleasure of observing a little stand called The Dead Sea. Luckily for those of you playing at home, I have seen the same or similar kiosk in malls in New Jersey and now Florida.

    The beautiful thing is the sales pitch. When you’re walking through a mall, the last thing you want is to be interrupted by one of these kiosk salespeople. If it was something you wanted to buy, it would be good enough to show up in a real store.

    A lot of them know you don’t care, and thus just stand silently as you go past or stare off into an imaginary sunset.

    But at The Dead Sea, they’ve figured out a great system that taps into human nature. I’m not sure if it’s our natural feeling to want to help, or an egotistical need to feel like we know things, but they’ve got something going on.

    It’s very simple: “Excuse me, can I ask you a question? Have you heard of the Dead Sea?”

    If they get that far, the target is 90 percent hooked into a minimum 1-minute conversation. The answer is always “Well sure I’ve heard of the Dead Sea, what you think I’m an idiot or something?” Or at least that’s the sentiment.

    They know you’ve heard of the Dead Sea, or at least you’ll stop because it’s an attractive woman. The targets are almost always men.

    They ask to see your hands, put some sort of lotion on there and start to rub it in. What are you going to do, walk away with half-rubbed lotion all over your hands? Not a chance. At the same time, they’re talking to you, asking if your mother/wife/girlfriend would like something like this. You’ve practically already bought the $50 gift pack. There’s nothing you can do.

    I can’t even begin to count how many people I’ve seen sucked in by the pitch. It’s retailistically brilliant. And if retailistically is not a word, it should be. They all walk away with the same look on their face. They have no idea what just happened or how they are going to explain the $50 gift pack if they someone they know. God forbid they do actually have a mother/wife/girlfriend who will see them walk in the door on a random Tuesday in September with a gift of lotion.

    The only savior is the shopping buddy. He brings in another fascinating part of human nature–peer pressure.

    The Dead Sea woman picks off a guy like a weak Gazelle from the herd. She does the lotion thing and is halfway to a sale. That’s when the guy who just stepped in to FYE to see if the Bob Dylan greatest hits album was out yet returns to look for his friend.

    He’s laughing before he even gets to the kiosk. He asks what’s going on. The woman tries to grab his hands and get the lotion going for a double sale. The second guy always has some sense. I think he just tries to preserve his chance to make fun of the stray Gazelle for many years to come. In this situation, the sale never happens. The Gazelle’s face starts to turn red, and all of a sudden he “has to meet someone.”

    The two men walk away from the kiosk, both laughing, but for different reasons. The Gazelle is trying to play off the situation like he didn’t just get totally suckered by an attractive woman asking if he’d heard of a well-known body of water. The other guy can’t believe it actually happened, and how lucky he was to stumble up on this goldmine hazing opportunity.

    See, working in the mall can be interesting.

    By cjhannas Cinnabon mall Uncategorized
  • 18 Jan

    Please Make it Stop

    I’ve been here for 7.5 hours. I have sold one pair of shoes. That sale was 6 hours ago. In that time I have had four times as many glasses of water (4). Another employee, who has not even been here for three days, has sold just as many pairs of shoes as I have (1). I have consumed as many cheesesteaks as pairs of shoes sold (1). I have consumed as many Cinnabons as pairs of shoes sold (1). I have consumed as many hot chocolates from Cinnabon as pairs of shoes sold (1).

    Shoot me now.

    EDITOR’S NOTE: I arrived at 12:58 p.m. I made that one shoe sale at 1:47 p.m. for $59.99. I left at 9:30 without making another sale, and somehow without killing myself.

    PPS: The next day, I had a $74.99 shoe returned the next day, making my two-day total negative.

    By cjhannas Cinnabon food insanity mall shoes Uncategorized
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